Google has been facing a slew of legal problems, and it does not look like they are going to be going away anytime soon. In spite of the fact that this is the case, the tech juggernaut has repeatedly tried to fight off these lawsuits. The latest suit that the corporation is trying to fend off comes from the Republican National Convention, specifically one where they allege that Google is unfairly targeting conservative content in their spam filter.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Google has asked a federal court to toss out this lawsuit. Google is denying the existence of any bias in its spam filter as well as its algorithms, even though the RNC has claimed that the company’s email service has been unfairly filtering out official emails that come from the party itself.
Google has also asserted that the RNC itself might be to blame for emails getting filtered. Back when Google was first launching the filters during the 2022 midterm election, the company asked the RNC to participate in the pilot program only to receive a denial.
That might have a role to play because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up allowing Google’s algorithms to learn what RNC emails look like and avoid having them get filtered out. This does not automatically mean that the lawsuit is frivolous, but Google usually does not fight this hard if it finds that it has actually done something that it should not have.
However, research has shown that about 67.5% of emails from the right wing get marked as spam, whereas only 10.2% of left wing emails get marked as such. Google claims that every single email gets passed through the same algorithm, which would poke a few holes in the bias theory.
Either way, the results of this case could reveal whether or not Silicon Valley actually tries to suppress conservative speech. It will be interesting to see if the lawsuit is allowed to proceed or if it is dropped.
Read next: This Survey Reveals How Different Generations Interact With Search Engines
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Google has asked a federal court to toss out this lawsuit. Google is denying the existence of any bias in its spam filter as well as its algorithms, even though the RNC has claimed that the company’s email service has been unfairly filtering out official emails that come from the party itself.
Google has also asserted that the RNC itself might be to blame for emails getting filtered. Back when Google was first launching the filters during the 2022 midterm election, the company asked the RNC to participate in the pilot program only to receive a denial.
That might have a role to play because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up allowing Google’s algorithms to learn what RNC emails look like and avoid having them get filtered out. This does not automatically mean that the lawsuit is frivolous, but Google usually does not fight this hard if it finds that it has actually done something that it should not have.
However, research has shown that about 67.5% of emails from the right wing get marked as spam, whereas only 10.2% of left wing emails get marked as such. Google claims that every single email gets passed through the same algorithm, which would poke a few holes in the bias theory.
Either way, the results of this case could reveal whether or not Silicon Valley actually tries to suppress conservative speech. It will be interesting to see if the lawsuit is allowed to proceed or if it is dropped.
Read next: This Survey Reveals How Different Generations Interact With Search Engines
